By Noe Gutierrez
Drop Mob is composed of Gabe Perez on vocals, Dave Burk (DRB) on lead guitar, Steven Zepeda on bass, John Camacho on drums and Curtis Hendricks on guitar. Their sound is defined as aggressive rap metal, but you can hear a Red Hot Chili Peppers vibe and ‘nu metal’ influences. Drop Mob will be performing at Desert Metal Night presented by Arthur Seay at The Hood Bar & Pizza on Friday, April, 28 at 8 p.m. along with hardcore desert rats Brain Vat and heavy music maestros House of Broken Promises. Spinning all the rock and metal you can handle is DJ Metal Mania on The Hood patio. Also on premises will be the desert’s mobile record store, ‘Round The Corner Vinyl’. The show is free and is the antagonistic flip-side to California’s Country Music Festival, Stagecoach. Drop Mob is nominated in the Coachella Valley Music Awards categories for ‘Best Metal Band,’ ‘Best New Band’ and Perez is up for ‘Best Frontman’ while Camacho is up for ‘Best Drummer’. You have until May 4th at midnight to vote. I caught up with some of the members of Drop Mob recently to discuss what they’ve been up to.
On their sound
Perez: “We fit right in to the Desert Metal Night show with our sound. We might catch a few people off guard when I start rapping, but I feel we are fully equipped.”
On their music
Perez: “I write all my own lyrics. They all come from my life experiences. We share these experiences live in a little more aggressive manner. We want to see the crowd bobbing and mosh if they feel it. We also hope to have them singing along to our songs.”
On each other
Perez: “Dave and Steve are two of the quietest bad-asses on the scene; same with John our drummer. They are total opposites of me and Curtis. We’re the talkers.”
Zepeda: “David is like the mad scientist of music composers/guitarists. I’ve known David since he worked at the video store. When we met up our conversation was always about music. He was doing his thing and I was doing my thing as far as the music scene at the time and I think at one point we jammed-out one time. I always thought one day we would jam again and years later here we are.”
Hendricks: “I’ve known Dave since the mid-90’s from Aloha Music in Indio where he taught guitar. I’ve been in a few bands with him over the years. He is definitely the craziest motherfucker I know on the guitar. He deserves so much more credit and he’ll hate that I said that because he’s disgustingly modest and wants to stay out of the limelight. I guarantee if you ask any guitarist out playing from that desert 90’s era to now, most of them will have either heard of Dave or know him personally. Gabe’s lyrics flow with insanity all while talking shit, always making you want to jump, bounce, and slam.”
Where does Drop Mob fit?
Hendricks: “We are metal at heart! Our music hits you hard. We fill-in with some hard-core Cookie Monster sound effects and mob it up for the crowd as hard as we can.”
Perez: “There are many influences from both hip-hop and metal ranging from old-school Rakim to Slipknot to Rage Against the Machine.”
Drop Mob is unique to our music scene and there is no other artist quite like them. We’ve all heard of the ‘nu-metal’ artists like Limp Bizkit, but Drop Mob puts more of an emphasis on the metal and rides Perez’ lyrics throughout each song with layers of syncopated guitar and bass/drum grooves. Who else can you bang your head to while shaking your backside?
